It would not be fair to the critics of Rotary, who include some of the most brilliant of the British and American writers, to charge them with prejudice.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are assured literary critics; it makes me suspect that they favour the word over the world it should describe. Such scribes fall victim too easily to the solecism of equating style with morality.
There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.
A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
For every prescriptive idea about the craft of fiction, there's at least one writer who makes a virtue of the contrary.
Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.
I'm more concerned with getting them to find and strengthen their original voice as writers rather than imposing my own subjective tastes, judgements or sensibility on the project.
The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.
Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.